Lucky Lotto win means day off for Heights shop

Lucky shop takes day off after winning Lotto sale$64 million won at Houston store not yet claimed

Published 6:30 am, Friday, February 10, 2006

The Shop & Save on North Yale might have been the luckiest place in town Thursday, but you couldn't tell it by all the long faces. One by one, would-be customers in search of cigarettes, sodas and lottery tickets arrived only to be brought up short by this hand-printed sign in the widow: "Sorry we close today."

The store's staff — who sold the winning $64 million ticket in Wednesday's Lotto Texas — had gone celebrating.

"I came too late," he added. "And I had some special numbers. I normally use the numbers that are printed in blue. This time I was going to use the red. Whenever the jackpot gets big, I'm compelled to believe that the spiritual laws are running with me."

The winning numbers — 7-11-25-26-34, with a Bonus Ball of 7 — will bring the lucky ticket holder the eighth-largest Lotto Texas prize since the game began in 1992. It's the biggest win since a Dallas-area player won $66 million last May, though it falls far short of the all-time fat jackpot — $145 million in June 2004. That prize was won by a ticket sold in El Paso.

This week's heart-stopping jackpot remained unclaimed as of late Thursday. The winner has 180 days to claim the money before it is declared unclaimed and transferred to a fund to benefit the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

Losing popularity

The winning ticket for the largest unclaimed Texas Lotto jackpot — $13 million — was sold at a Humble liquor store in June 2001.

Shop & Save management, who will receive $500,000 for selling the ticket, could not be reached for comment.

"Some of our players are cognizant that they purchased tickets and some aren't," said lottery spokeswoman Leticia Vasquez. "I'm not surprised that no one's called. They may not have any idea that their ticket matched. Or maybe they're sitting there in stunned silence. Or maybe they're already finding legal or financial advice prior to calling us and claiming."

Vasquez said 3,787,336 tickets were sold between Saturday and Wednesday night's drawing.

"When the jackpots hit the double digits," she said, "people buy more tickets. When it gets to $9 million, $10 million — certainly $50 million, it catches people's attention."

Last fiscal year, the Texas lottery funneled more than $1 billion into the state educational system.

Despite the enthusiasm for big-prize lotteries like the one this week, Lotto Texas continues to lose ground to instant-win, scratch-off games that sometimes offer millions in prize money. Last week, Texas players spent more than $54,156,035 for scratch-off tickets — one of the top sales weeks in the state lottery's 14-year history.

Seventy percent of lottery players opt for the scratch-off games. That percentage, Vasquez said, is up almost 6 percent from the same period last year. Marketing studies of Lotto Texas players have shown that "many of our players are not thrilled," Vasquez said.

'The wrong store'

To play Lotto Texas, one must choose a series of numbers, 1 to 44, as well as a power ball number. Some contestants, as did this week's winner, allow a computer to select the numbers. Scratch-off games, which instantly inform the player of his or her success, are more user-friendly.

Lottery officials are looking for ways to simplify the Lotto Texas game in an effort to make it more appealing, Vasquez said.

Such matters, though, were far from the minds of would-be customers Thursday who rolled into the parking lot of the Shop & Save at 2626 Yale.

Loy Kim, 25, dejectedly fingered the $15 in lottery tickets he had purchased in hope of being this week's big winner. On this morning, they were just so much worthless paper.

"I bought them at the wrong store," he conceded, nodding toward a liquor store two doors down.

But, he said, his hope still lives. "I'd pay off the house," he said of his plans, should he win the next big game. "I'd help the family and give some to the poor."

'No regrets'

Earlier in the morning, those gathered at the store said, an apparent store employee had carried a six-pack of beer from the business, posted the closed sign, locked the door and driven away. That report could not be confirmed Thursday.

Paul Bustos, who runs a landscape business and usually spends about $30 a month on lottery tickets, had mentally rehearsed his winner's speech as well.

"I would take off and go to Austin and collect," he said. "But then I'd come right back and go to work. I love my job."

As the lottery losers dreamed of winning — or just yearned for a bag of potato chips from the shuttered store — Mohammad Shaikh, who clerks at the Sunset Heights Food Market across the street, struck a blasé pose.

"We don't sell lottery tickets here," he said. "We used to, but we stopped several years ago. You never make more than a dollar or two off of them. Dealing with the state — it's just not worth it. We have no regrets."